General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean - GFCM

Workshop on the assessment of management measures (WKMSE)

9 April, 2018 -11 April, 2018


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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Workshop on the assessment of management measures (WKMSE) of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean was held at the Ministry of Agriculture headquarters, Zagreb, Croatia from 9 to 11 April 2018.With regard to small pelagic species in the Adriatic Sea and demersal resources in the Strait of Sicily, the key objectives of the meeting were to: i) develop a management strategy evaluation (MSE) framework for each of the fishery addressed, including the identification of the adequate Operational Model, the identification of the list the management scenarios to be tested (taking into account scenarios previously proposed by the Commission or agreed with relevant stakeholders), and the identification of performance statistics to be used for the analysis of simulation results; ii) run the MSE simulations and iii) prepare draft advice on the biological and socioeconomic implications of alternative management scenarios, to be submitted to the SAC. The workshop was organized just before the third meeting of the SAC Subregional Committee for the Adriatic Sea (SRC-AS) to which the conclusions of the discussions were reported. The WKMSE used different methods to assess the impacts of alternative management scenarios for the two fisheries. For small pelagics, the method used in 2017 (FLR/MSE) was significantly revised and two extra methods were used to assess socioeconomic impacts. The work carried for the demersal fishery of the Strait of Sicily comprised an update of 2017 using the same medium-term forecast methods. The management scenarios tested were agreed during the meeting. Simulations showed that under current fishing mortality, all stocks analysed remained outside safe biological limits, while under some of the management scenarios tested, stocks were within safe biological limits and, in some cases, yields recovered to levels similar to those before the management measures.